The present invention relates to a design supporting apparatus and method, and more particularly to a design supporting apparatus and method for supporting design work including a plurality of design stages.
In a conventional design supporting apparatus and method, the design stages of the design work are treated as follows.
(1) General-Purpose Design Supporting Apparatus and Method
The general-purpose design supporting apparatus and method do not treat the design stages clearly. However, command hierarchies serve in a similar manner thereto. That is, when a certain command hierarchy is selected, a subsequent editing process is limited and a sectional operation for an object can be performed. The editing process can be customized by means of a macro or link of the user programs. An example of such general-purpose design supporting apparatus and method is described in a program product known as "USER INTERFACE OF A DRAFTING SYSTEM HICAD/DRAFT/W" of Hitachi Engineering Work Station 2050G issued July, 1988, PP 1-5.
(2) Problem-Oriented Design Supporting Apparatus and Method
The problem-oriented design supporting apparatus and method are intended to solve a problem such as, for example, provision of dimensions or material in response to a predetermined input. In the problem-oriented design supporting apparatus and method, the design stage of "to solve a specific problem" is previously set and the design stage is further developed to partial design stages. The partial design stages include a display process and an editing process of inherent design data, and the user can advance the design by dealing with the design stages which are displayed as several pictures in succession. However, the developing method for the partial design stages is fixed to a previously provided system. As an example of the problem-oriented design supporting apparatus and method, there is a mechanical structure computation system MSTR described in a catalog for mail order entitled "FACE AUTOMATIC MACHINE" of MISUMI Co., Ltd., pages 763-764, issued August, 1990.
(3) Knowledge-Based Design Supporting Apparatus and Method
The knowledge-based design supporting apparatus and method express the design stage as a set of inherent knowledges. A method of describing the design stages by means of five kinds of knowledge is described in, for example, the fourth page of an article entitled "DESIGN SHELL: A FORMALISM FOR PROTOTYPE REFINEMENT IN KNOWLEDGE-BASED DESIGN SYSTEM", Artificial Intelligence in Engineering, Vol. 5, No. 1, pages 2-8, issued January, 1990. However, the structural description of the design stages is static and means for adding a new design stage during the course of operation is not taken into consideration. Further, there is no description of a display process of the design data at each of the design stages and an actual utilization method of the five kinds of knowledge.
The present invention is intended to solve certain problems included in the conventional design supporting apparatus and method, which problems will be now described below.
(1) Problem of Dynamic Modification of Design Stages
In the case of the problem-oriented design supporting apparatus, as shown in FIG. 12, a series of design stages necessary for a design are adapted and an integrated system having a picture layout and processes corresponding to respective design stages is constructed. However, in an actual design of a product, as shown in FIG. 13, it is necessary to select new parameters in the design stage of the design work and design stages are added and modified in accordance with the selected parameters. The addition and modification of the design stages are carried out to advance the design work by utilizing other measures, for example, a desk-top calculator. Accordingly, the design work is very complicated.
(2) Problem of Representation Capability of Design Stages
In general, in order to perform work efficiently, the design is required to be performed in consideration of "when", "what is an object" and "what to do". More particularly, as shown in FIG. 14, it is necessary to divide objects to be designed and design tools (editing commands) into those necessary for the work at that time and others. Further, the object to be designed is required to be converted to data in order to be able to make it work. However, command customized information in a general-purpose design supporting apparatus describes only "what to do" independently of "when" and since the user or an event driven process also refers to unnecessary information, the work efficiency is reduced. In the case of the knowledge-based design supporting apparatus, since there is no display processing method of design data available to the user, there is a problem the the work efficiency is reduced similarly.
(3) Dependence Relation of Design Stages
The work in each of the design stages is not determined only by the design stage thereof and is varied in accordance with precedent design stages. The prior art does not take this point into consideration and lacks flexibility.
(4) Continuity of Design Stages
The continuity in the case where the work is once interrupted and is then resumed is not obtained only by the command customized information and static information and the user is required to prepare the design stage again. Further, similarity of the design work relating to a plurality of design data is not considered.